Webby thoughts, most about around interesting applications of ecmascript in relation to other open web standards. I live in Mountain View, California, and spend some of my spare time co-maintaining Greasemonkey together with Anthony Lieuallen.

2006-02-10

Ever reflected upon how the sun is not as high in the sky on a given time throughout the year? In Sweden, at about 60 degrees latitude, it's very noticable how short the days become in winter, how late they start and how early they end.

Last week end, I was playing with John Walker's Earth viewer, a seasoned tool that has been on the web for the better year of the past decade more or less unchanged, and as excellent throughout this entire time. Few services have that kind of life span on the web.

Anyway, I wanted to animate the sun's reach over the year, for a given time of day, over perhaps 25 frames spread evenly across the rest of the year, and loop it. Not a very difficult application to write, with Walker's service generating the actual imagery, so before long I had a working setup, peeking down at me from 20,000 kilometers above:

Sunlight over the year

If you are not particularly interested in the local daylight conditions where I live (chances are good you are not :-), you can always pick a more interesting spot on the face of the earth via my blog header, at least if you are reading this on my index page or on the day archive page, which feature that map. Just double click some spot on either of the map views in the blog header, and the globe will adjust to the new coordinates. Have fun!

Ever reflected upon how the sun is not as high in the sky on a given time throughout the year? In Sweden, at about 60 degrees latitude, it's very noticable how short the days become in winter, how late they start and how early they end.

Last week end, I was playing with John Walker's Earth viewer, a seasoned tool that has been on the web for the better year of the past decade more or less unchanged, and as excellent throughout this entire time. Few services have that kind of life span on the web.

Anyway, I wanted to animate the sun's reach over the year, for a given time of day, over perhaps 25 frames spread evenly across the rest of the year, and loop it. Not a very difficult application to write, with Walker's service generating the actual imagery, so before long I had a working setup, peeking down at me from 20,000 kilometers above:

Sunlight over the year

If you are not particularly interested in the local daylight conditions where I live (chances are good you are not :-), you can always pick a more interesting spot on the face of the earth via my blog header, at least if you are reading this on my index page or on the day archive page, which feature that map. Just double click some spot on either of the map views in the blog header, and the globe will adjust to the new coordinates. Have fun!